Candy at Last

By Candy Spelling

The followup to the New York Times bestseller Stories from Candyland has even better stories to tell—about Candy Spelling’s notorious rift and reconciliation with her daughter, Tori, her misadventures in dating and sex, and her new life as a producer, writer, and businesswoman.

After thirty-eight happy years of marriage to influential producer Aaron Spelling, raising two children in Hollywood, and co-managing one of the largest estates in the country (finally selling Spelling Manor, as detailed on her HGTV series, for $85 million), Candy is now adjusting to life on her own. In her new uncharted territory, she’s ready to share the most intimate details of her life with Aaron; how his illness caused her to question her identity; and how she’s reinvented herself as an independent woman, businesswoman, and television personality. Along the way, Candy reveals all-new dishy stories including those of Hollywood friends Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Michael Jackson, Janet Leigh, Dean Martin, and Elizabeth Taylor (her lifelong rival over their jewelry).

Engaging, heartwrenching, intimate, and hilarious, Candy at Last shares her story of how family, friends, and her husband’s inspiring advice to “follow your dreams” has made her determined to live life to the fullest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: May 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630260729

Candy Spelling

Candy Spelling, whose husband Aaron produced America's favorite entertainment (Dynasty, Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Beverly Hills 90210), is one of Hollywood's most famous women.  Her marriage was one of Tinseltown's happiest and most enduring, ending only with Aaron's death in 2006.  Since then, Candy began her own entertainment and media career, with a new TV series, Bank of Hollywood, co-producing Promises, Promises on Broadway and writing on a variety of pop culture topics for TMZ.com,  The Huffington Post and momlogic.com and as a contributing editor for Los Angeles Confidential Magazine. She is involved with a number of charitable and public service organizations.

Book preview

    Preface    

I’ve lived my life in three different stages. There were my formative years, growing up with my family. Then I was an ingénue who dated and later married the hardest-working television writer in Hollywood. Aaron’s world of famous faces and sophistication was an intimidating milieu, especially for a shy young woman who was raised to speak only when spoken to. Fortunately for me, my new husband’s talents at the typewriter were matched by his kindness and generous spirit. With his loving support, I was able to overcome these emotional obstacles and fill the shoes his immense success laid out for me.

Despite having a very public profile, our family life was very private. Aaron and I didn’t go out at night. We weren’t seen anywhere cool. We did things like take the kids to Swenson’s Ice Cream Parlor. We also liked to have our closest friends over for movie night in our home. In fact, it was only about seven years ago that I went to my first concert to see Madonna.

Until recently, I never spoke publicly or gave any interviews. I suppose this is why it has been so easy for me to be characterized as the cunning Alexis Carrington. The truth is, I am more like Blake’s dutiful wife, Krystle Carrington, but let’s face it—she wasn’t very exciting.

For almost four decades, my job was to create the stable home life Aaron needed so he could be out there in the Hollywood trenches. When he became ill, we had a complete role reversal. I had to step up and take over. Protecting Aaron from scrutiny and preserving his reputation became my number-one priority.

When Aaron died, I not only lost my partner in life. I was also suddenly missing the force of nature who had defined me and our family. For the first time in thirty-eight years, I had to learn to function in the big, scary world on my own. There were new challenges every day and I was definitely out of my comfort zone.

When I sat down to share my story, my intention was to share the beginning of my life with Aaron Spelling. Then I thought about the absolutely amazing letters I receive from women who have been recently widowed or who have terminally ill husbands. They share their grief and fears with me, or tell me that something I said gave them strength. I had never thought about how my personal experiences might help other women. Once I realized I could have a positive impact, I decided it was time to talk about the end of Aaron’s life as well.

With age has also come the loss of my filters. So before I knew it, I was writing about my misadventures of dating and sex. After forty years of being with the same partner, it was a whole new world. This is uncharted territory for a woman of my age, and I am certain the media will have at it. But honestly, I don’t think they could possibly say anything worse about me than they already have.

Over the years, I have learned the difference between things that I can change and things that will always be the same. With the help of some very good therapy, I have resolved my own internal feelings about my complex relationship with my daughter, and here, for the first time, I am able to write honestly about it.

It’s been a few months now since I turned my completed manuscript into my publisher. Reading over the chapters, I am very proud of my work and the insights I impart. Despite all of my ups and downs, there is very little I would go back and change in my life. Even during the toughest times when there was a giant elephant in the room, there was a life lesson to be learned.

There is an old adage that asks, How do you deal with an elephant in the room? The answer to this has proved true time and again, You deal with it one bite at a time.

    Introduction    

The air on the second floor of the mortuary definitely seemed thinner than it had been in the lobby downstairs. I was cold and having trouble breathing. The melancholic energy hit me like an invisible force field as soon as I stepped off the elevator. I tried to make polite eye contact with the somber funeral arranger as he stepped aside so I could make the left-hand turn down the hallway to the room where the coffins were displayed. The more steps we took, the longer the hallway seemed to grow. I thought we would never get there. Choosing the coffin and the liner would be the conclusion of almost an entire day spent at the cemetery making decisions for the last place on Earth my husband would be.

It was a sunny day in mid-June. Normally in Los Angeles we have June gloom all month, but on this day, the sun was out. The warm weather made walking the entire grounds that much more taxing. I had brought my twenty-eight-year-old son Randy for moral support, thinking we could make decisions together, but he was understandably having trouble coping. Aaron was still alive but slipping away every day. I was just a few years older than Randy was when my mother died. I had learned from this experience that it was better to take care of these arrangements in a relatively stable state of mind. My father completely fell apart, and it was all left on my shoulders.

Randy ran out of the room as I struggled to make a decision on the color of the satin liner. He probably thought I was going on and on about things that didn’t matter, but Randy wasn’t a husband yet. He didn’t understand the weight of these decisions. This would be the last thing I would do for my husband of thirty-eight years. It didn’t matter that nobody would see Aaron; I wanted to put the same care and attention to detail in these decisions that I had throughout our marriage. I wanted it to be perfect for him. It was no different from making sure his shirts were neatly folded and put away. Or the way I always had his favorite snacks laid out precisely the way he liked them when he sat down in front of the television to watch football. Aaron, I knew, would have expected me to handle it just this way.

I let Randy run outside without going after him. He was better off waiting for me in the car. I stayed and finished my business because it had to be done, and it was my job to do it.

Candy at last

1

The Torn Ribbon on My Heart

Aaron had been living in a prison for the last two years. He had suffered a stroke and been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is a scary and mysterious disease, but my mourning didn’t begin on the day of his diagnosis. It began when he refused to get out of bed and refused to be nourished. His doctor came to the house regularly to check on him and hydrate him intravenously. The doctor wanted to take him down the street to UCLA Medical Center where he could be managed more completely, but Aaron was very clear.

No thanks, Doc.

"You don’t really want to be here, do you?

That’s right, Doc.

My husband didn’t want to be sustained knowing he couldn’t live the life he knew and loved. I watched him waste away. He got so thin that his wedding band would slide off his finger. His nurse and I convinced him to leave it on his bed table so he wouldn’t panic when it slipped off and he couldn’t find it.

There was at least a good year when Aaron couldn’t go out with me. Some of our most thoughtful friends got me out of the house for lunches and dinners. After a while I started getting uncomfortable because it was the same friends constantly taking me out. Normally I would have reciprocated by having them for dinner at the house, but Aaron was in bad shape, and I knew he wouldn’t want anyone to see him in this condition. I didn’t even feel comfortable inviting people over.

I decided I could remedy this by joining Hillcrest Country Club. They had Sunday night barbecues and al fresco dining with music on Friday nights. I would be able to invite other couples, and they wouldn’t be able to pick up the check. Only members are allowed to pay for food and drinks at country clubs. As a member, I would just sign a chit and then get a monthly bill in the mail. Problem solved.

A woman joining a country club on her own is a bold move. Hillcrest was a men’s club right up until the 1980s, when the by-laws were changed. Prior to that, women were allowed there only if their husbands were members, and if the husband died, the membership could only be passed to a son. Instead of calling this chauvinism, they called it legacy. Not surprisingly, there was not one woman on the review board. Just a tribunal of twelve men asking me why I was joining the club as a single woman and not with my husband.

Their memories were obviously short and the administration files not very comprehensive. Aaron had been a member over a decade ago. He only joined at the insistence of Marvin Davis, who was head of 20th Century Fox Studios at the time. The truth was, Aaron was usually working, and when he wasn’t, his favorite pastime was sitting around the table with the kids laughing and eating. We had our own tennis court at home, so we never went to the club. Well, one day the membership committee showed up at our old house on South Mapleton Drive to complain that Aaron wasn’t using his membership enough. Aaron may have been mild-mannered, but he never liked being told what to do. He very politely suggested they refund him his $50,000 membership fee and in turn, he wouldn’t be a member there anymore. When we closed the door on our visitors that night, he said, They can take their membership and …

Instead of reminding the board of this episode, I mustered my courage and told them the truth. If you don’t already know, my husband is very ill and is going to die. If I join with him, then you’re just going to make me do this all over again because the membership will belong to him or my son.

The men all got very quiet after I spoke. I don’t think they knew quite what to say since I had been so truthful and to the point. They had nothing to argue with me about. Ultimately, I turned out to be the third woman to be given membership on her own.

At this point Aaron needed medical care twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The thermostat in the master bedroom was turned up to seventy-six degrees, and still he lay there under two duvets, freezing. I had moved into Tori’s old room so Aaron would be more comfortable and the nurses could look after his needs. I would go sit with him in what used to be our room. It felt foreign. Nothing was the same anymore.

Sherreth was one of Aaron’s nurses who is still my friend to this day. She was so sweet, soulful, and compassionate. There were days when Aaron would be really angry with me when I got home after being out for just a few hours. Sometimes I went to therapy, which I needed desperately, and other times I would just go out for long drives to give myself space and clear my head. I understood that often with dementia, people get crabby. I knew the fighting was coming from his confused mind, but it was still tough especially because he had never spoken to me this way in all the years that we were married. Sherreth would always step in and say, Mr. Spelling, you’ve been waiting for your wife to come home, and now she’s home and you pick a fight with her.

Aaron’s clear moments became fewer and far between. Strangely, at the end, he was very clear. I should have known that was the day he was going to die. That morning, Sherreth encouraged me to go to the hairdresser. She promised, as always, that she would call and give me a heads up if she thought the time was coming. Well, when her call came through on my cell, I knew before I even answered, it was real. I literally ran out of the salon in West Hollywood with my hair soaking wet. I had driven myself and as I raced home, West Hollywood seemed light-years away from The Manor.

I made it home in time and climbed into bed with my husband. I held him in my arms and tried to comfort him. I kept saying, I’m here. I’m right here. Sherreth had explained there would be a death chant as the body shut down and the last of the oxygen was expelled from Aaron’s lungs. It was unbelievably excruciating and it seemed to go on forever. Finally, Aaron took his last breath, and he was gone. I held onto him and wailed like a child. After what must have been a few hours, Sherreth took him out of my arms.

On the day of his burial, I went to view his body. I honestly can’t remember if Randy went with me. He may have but he didn’t go into the room with me to see Aaron, and that was okay. I couldn’t help but think they had done his hair wrong and I wished I had brought him one of his older shirts that would have fit his fragile frame better. I took a mental picture of him, one I’ll never forget, and then they pulled down the lid. It was easier for me once the coffin was closed. We had a small service of about thirty or forty people, just family and close friends. I chose a sarcophagus inside the hilltop mausoleum as Aaron’s final resting place. I wanted him to be above ground, and I wanted his grave to reflect his magnificent character, his incredible accomplishments, and his brilliance.

One of my clearest and most moving memories from that day was when Tori, Randy, and I lined up before the service for the tearing of the ribbon. It’s a very touching Jewish mourning tradition rooted in the biblical stories of David, Jacob, and Job, all of whom tore their clothes when they received tragic news. The ribbon is pinned to the clothes of the bereaved, usually right over the heart, then torn by the rabbi.

After the burial, we retreated to The Manor. I had organized some very simple catering. I remember thinking, what is it with funerals and food? The last thing I wanted to do was eat. The reception was endless and uncomfortable, yet I dreaded the thought of being alone that night. The house had already taken on a different countenance. I realized that day the importance of letting people take care of you in times like these. So when my dear friend Willy offered to spend the night with me and stay for a few nights, I took her up on it.

I definitely didn’t laugh about it then, but I do now. Because I am who I am, nobody came to the door with any homemade casseroles. There was only one platter of food delivered to the house. It was a deli platter sent courtesy of Hillcrest Country Club.

2

Beverly Hills Child Bride

It was 1964 and I was probably the only teenage girl who hadn’t been infected with the Beatlemania epidemic. When The Beatles came to Los Angeles, one of my girlfriends found out where they were staying and paid for a helicopter to airlift her into the backyard of the house. At nineteen, I was an old soul in a young body. I loved classic jazz and music from the 1940s. I was also wiser beyond my years having already been married and divorced.

I was only seventeen when I married my boyfriend, Howard, who was twenty-one at the time. Like most girls that age, I didn’t know who I was yet or what I wanted from life, but I bought into the fairy tale when Howard proposed. My family lived in Beverly Hills, which, in the post–World War II years, was being shaped as a glamorous shopping and lifestyle destination. The city’s famous hotels like the iconic pink Beverly Hills Hotel and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which had just been renovated to include a ballroom for big bands, brought tourists from all over the world. Funny enough, I think it was The Jack Benny Show, which used Beverly Hills as a backdrop, that put the fabled city on the map of America’s imagination.

My parents were regular middle-class people living beyond their means. Of course my father, Merritt Marer, was the only one who knew this very privileged information. He was a traveling salesman for a furniture line. My mother, Augusta Gene Marer, who later changed her name legally to Gene, was a beautiful woman consumed with all things elegant. She was a fit model for dress companies and an absolute perfectionist. We had a houseman named Taylor who drove my brother, Tony, and me to school. His wife, Lena, was our housekeeper.

Being driven to kindergarten by a chauffeur is not all that it is cracked up to be. In fact, it was awful. Children don’t want to be singled out at school, and I was no exception, so I had Taylor drop me off two blocks away from the school so I could walk just like all the other five-year-olds. Probably not unlike other families of this generation, my brother and I didn’t speak unless spoken to, and decisions were made for us without any discussion. This included what I wore to school. While everyone else was wearing blue Oxfords with white-striped laces, I was in fancy black patent leather Mary Janes. My clothes were always a fancier style than what everyone else was wearing, and I was bullied. Even the other mothers phoned my mother to ask why I wore such expensive clothes to school. What they didn’t know was that we didn’t shop at Saks or Magnins. We shopped at moderately priced stores like Lerners. My clothes were not actually expensive, they just looked expensive.

Ultimately it didn’t matter, I suppose. At the end of the day, I just didn’t fit in with the other kids. All the teasing devastated me, and I was held back from moving on to the first grade. In the teacher’s assessment, I was not emotionally mature enough for the next grade. Needless to say, flunking kindergarten did not do wonders for my self-esteem, and, sadly, from that time on I think my mother held the belief that I was not very smart.

About this time my father suffered some financial missteps when he expanded his retail furniture business too quickly. We lost everything including our home and were forced to move into an apartment in Hollywood. Ironically, what was ruinous to my parents financially was a blessing to my childhood development. We could no longer afford to keep Taylor, so now I walked two miles to the bus stop and then used public transportation to get to school every day. I really enjoyed being out in the world and getting a taste of real life. My new school was also significantly less competitive, and I was able to skip a grade and make up for having been held back.

Despite our circumstances, my mother continued my proper upbringing. I learned how to cook and set a French table service, which my mother still set every night for our family dinner. I also learned the art of needlepoint, was taught to entertain, and